CAEP Board Adopts New Language for Standard 3.2, Advanced Programs
At its biannual meeting this month, the Board of Directors of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) adopted language to clarify and refine the academic achievement component required in Standard 3: Candidate Quality, Recruitment, and Selectivity. Other board action included approving revisions to the CAEP Standards for Advanced Programs, bylaw updates, budgetary work, and other business.
For Standard 3, Component 2—which addresses candidates’ academic achievement—the following actions were approved, according to a statement from the CAEP board:
- Continued to define academic achievement through reading and mathematics assessments, and strengthened and expanded the standard to include assessment of prospective educators’ writing skills. These subjects will be assessed through national, state, or valid and reliable alternative EPP-created tools. CAEP recognizes there are a number of valid and reliable assessments that measure reading, mathematics, and writing.
- All teacher candidates in a program must demonstrate academic achievement either at admission or sometime prior to graduation.
- The average assessment scores of each year’s beginning group of candidates must be within the top 50% for the reading, mathematics, and writing (the writing top 50% requirement is effective by 2021), and the group average GPA must be 3.0.
- CAEP will call on measurement experts for advice about the content and scoring of individual assessments that states and EPPs are using to ensure the assessments satisfy the requirement that EPPs demonstrate candidates’ academic achievement.
- EPPs must monitor disaggregated data on enrolled candidates for branch campuses, if they have them, for technology-based preparation, and for individual preparation (licensure or certification area) programs.
- Alternative arrangements for meeting this academic achievement component will be approved only under special circumstances and in collaboration with one or more states.
The amended version of Standard 3.2 takes effect July 1, 2016, and will be used for CAEP accreditation of either initial or advanced programs, and for submitting self-study reports in fall 2017.
“We can never know the impact that new standards will have until we have had a chance to apply them and gain input from the field,” said CAEP Board Member Randy Hitz, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University (OR). “The CAEP Board received a lot of helpful feedback regarding Standard 3, Component 2, and we made adjustments while trying hard to maintain the purpose and integrity of the original version. We look forward to continuing to work collaboratively and closely with all segments of the education profession as we implement the new standards and advance the profession through national accreditation.”
For information about the new Standards for Advanced Programs, see http://caepnet.org/standards/standards-advanced-programs. Their implementation window is longer, requiring self-study reports to include advanced-level programs only after September 1, 2017.
AACTE will continue to assist members in the accreditation process as updates develop from CAEP.
Tags: accreditation, teacher quality
